


Judge and Jury

by Manuscriptor



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Crowley's Fall, Gen, The Seven Days of Creation, biblical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:43:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19423420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manuscriptor/pseuds/Manuscriptor
Summary: Crowley wasn't given a trail. Was not given the chance to beg, not that he would have.He was there, and then he wasn't.





	Judge and Jury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InterstellarVagabond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterstellarVagabond/gifts).



It had been a normal day in Heaven. 

Except days hadn’t been invented yet. And neither had time. So the concept of anything was just one huge stretch laid out before everyone. It was wonderful because it was neither slow nor fast. Nothing crawled. Nothing dragged. Everything moved just how it was supposed to. 

Crowley appreciated the lack of time, even though he didn’t know what time was. The concept didn’t occur to him at all because it didn’t exist. All he knew was that he could sit on the golden roof of a golden house and croon endless songs on perfect pitch without anything changing around him. He could luxuriate in his songs, perfect each lyric and each harmony and spin them into the grandest things with the never-changing state of himself. 

It was beautiful. 

He was beautiful. 

It was a fact, and with Heaven being the only place that existed at the moment, facts were the only things that Crowley really had. He held each dear to his heart. While he sang, he could think about them and how true they were. 

He was beautiful. 

His songs were beautiful. 

The place he lived was beautiful. 

When time was created, it gave Crowley such whiplash that he lost a dozen and a half feathers and screeched a note that was supposed to be crooned. His heart started beating in time with every second, and Crowley was terrified by this new sensation, sure that his chest was going to get torn open and whatever had been implanted in him would take over. 

He sat completely silent for the first time, cradling his chest and just feeling this new feeling. Time passed, for the first . . . time, and the shadows around him moved with the light. His heart kept up the seconds and while Crowley counted them for the first time in his life, he realized just how much power that was outside of him. 

He didn’t sing for the rest of the day. 

The concept of day was new for him. 

When the light faded around him as the seconds crawled on, Crowley well and truly panicked. He was terrified, more than ever, that Heaven was somehow ending and he was going to fade with the beams around him. He abandoned his second-counting and took to the sky. 

Higher and higher he climbed. The clouds around him turned stringy and thin and faded to a clinging, cloying mist that snaked into his feathers and weighed him down. Crowley didn’t let that stop him. He climbed higher, using wings that had almost atrophied. He had gotten too used to sitting around and singing and now the actual movement of flying made his muscles ache in a way they never had before. He felt time on his skin and fatigue in his bones. 

When he saw the Moon—somehow the word came directly to his mind, unprompted, though he had never known it before—something inside of him immediately supplied that this was a creation of his God and that it was sacred. This glowing silver planet hadn’t existed and now it did, and Crowley’s heart was counting how many seconds old it was. 

A wave of heat and energy blasted the entire stretch of his wings, and Crowley whipped around, nearly blinding himself as another new thing, another foreign entity loomed over him and growing still. Just like before, the word sprang into Crowley’s mind. 

Sun. 

The huge ball of burning gas and exploding energy was more than anything Crowley had ever seen in his life. The concept of life came with the concept of time. Crowley still wasn’t sure how to process either. 

The Sun. 

It was so hot and bright, both of which Crowley had never felt or known before. He cowered in the bulk of the newest star. He wanted to shrink down and down and down. He tucked his wings and dove, seeking the shadows and shelter of the golden houses. He couldn’t take this. His heart was _hammering_ out seconds. 

Crowley found a golden house, one that he had never seen before. It was empty and that was all he needed. The rest of the angels were all out, admiring the newest creations and singing their songs. Crowley crawled into the lowest bedroom, tucking himself small and smaller underneath the bed until all that was left was him and the passing seconds. 

He didn’t come out until six hundred four thousand and eight hundred of those seconds had passed. 

By then, even his wings needed to be stretched and while the passage of time had become familiar enough to him, Crowley wasn’t ready for what he would discover once he showed his face again. No one had missed him, really, since they were all too busy singing. Crowley climbed to the roof of the golden house and sat, just in time to watch the sun begin its decent downward. He could recognize this as a normal thing now, not any reason to panic. 

He looked out and saw what his God had done. What had been created while he had hid his face? 

The new planet, the name given freely to his mind, sat suspended on nothing. Both near and far away at the same time. Vast and huge and unexplored, but as Crowley studied it, only occupied by two intelligent life forces. Not angels but another something new. 

Crowley squinted, leaning forward in his seat, staring down at _Earth_ and studying what God had created. 

The two new lives were not angelic. They were something completely new, and the word came to his mind like everything else. 

Human. 

The two of them were different from each other, unlike angels who all seemed to be the same copy used over and over again. These two humans were completely unique, even next to each other. They were both human, but both separate. They were fascinating because Crowley had never seen them before. Crowley felt something new in his chest, something that wasn’t his beating heart. 

He perched on top of the golden house and stared down at the humans, watching them move and walk and live their lives. They were so much different than himself. So much more.

His heart beat inside his chest. 

But there was something more. 

Crowley curled his wings around himself and leaned a bit further out on his perch. He was so wrapped up in his observations that he didn’t even notice the other angels approaching until they were already landing on the roof. 

“Crowley!” 

He whipped around at the greeting, not scared exactly but definitely caught off guard. He relaxed when he recognized the newcomers, angels that he knew and trusted. Harut and Marut and Shamsiel in their usual trio. They harmonized well together, and Crowley occasionally sang with them. 

“Hail!” he called, raising a hand in greeting, smoothing his feathers in an attempt to compose himself. 

“Have you seen what God is doing?” Shamsiel asked, either not noticing or not acknowledging the way Crowley had been startled. “Making so many new things. Time is the most strange, I think. Did you know it’s been _seven_ days?” 

“We can now keep track of how long we sing,” Harut said, flaring their wings to idly examine the feathers. They didn’t act bored, but they did act as if they had something better they’d rather be doing. 

“As if we needed to,” Marut said, slinging their even wider wings open to encompass their sibling. Marut and Harut were not strictly siblings but hardly ever seen apart. 

“What do you think of the humans?” Crowley asked. He looked away from the angels and back towards Earth. “God’s newest creation.” 

“She definitely knew what she was doing,” Shamsiel said. She took a seat at the edge of the roof, where Crowley had been sitting a moment before. “They are everything we are not.” 

Crowley cocked his head. He waited a moment and then took the place next to her, too curious not to. He had to tuck his wings a bit closer to make room, but he was able to fit. 

“What do you mean?” 

Shamsiel gestured down towards Earth and Crowley looked. 

The humans lived together, separate but the same. They ate food and bathed and spent time together. They cared for all the rest of God’s creatures, walking hand in hand as they did their duties. They knew each other, intimately and passionately and in ways that Crowley didn’t understand. God never told them of the actions in the garden. The only love Crowley had ever known was love for God and her power and might. 

“I don’t understand,” Crowley said plainly. 

“Love,” Marut told him. “For each other.” 

“God gave them the capacity,” Harut added. “In her great knowledge.” 

“They are free,” Shamsiel said with a soft smile of her own. “To love and be loved.” 

Crowley stared down at the two humans, lost in the new world made just for them, enjoying it with no worries or fears or knowledge that they were being watched. The garden they lived in was beautiful too. It provided shelter and food and safe place for them to sleep and live and play. No weeds tried to tangle the vegetables and no trees fought for space and resources. It was the perfect paradise outside of Heaven. 

Shamsiel’s words echoed in Crowley’s brain. 

“What would it be like to be free?” he asked. 

The burning came without warning. 

Hotter than the Sun, greedier too as it flowed over Crowley’s shoulders and down the tips of his wings. He shouted in surprise and jumped to his feet. He had never felt pain before and this was terrifying and all-consuming. Shamsiel, Harut, and Marut all leapt away from him, fear and confusion on all of their faces. 

“What’s going on?” Crowley demanded. He thrashed his wings in an attempt to shake off the fire. 

It didn’t do anything. 

The pain was growing larger and more demanding now. His feathers crackled and snapped, and Crowley didn’t know what crying was until that moment. His cheeks were wet and the salt dripped into his mouth. He licked his lips, the taste just as foreign as the feeling. 

Crowley wept. 

The fire on his shoulders curled over the top of his head and finally found his face. Crowley screamed at the pain, clawing at his own skin as it burned and burned and _burned_. Pain that he never knew existed and he never imagined he’d ever feel now took over every part of his body. He wasn’t even aware of Harut or Marut or Shamsiel. Crowley’s entire world had narrowed to himself and his pain and his own burning wings. 

He stumbled, losing his sense of balance. He couldn’t remember where he was or what he had been doing. When his feet plunged over the edge of the roof, he couldn’t find the strength to even fly. His wings were torn and ragged anyway, just a white hot region of pain. Crowley wouldn’t have been able to use them to carry himself anyway. 

He fell, out of control for the first time. He could stop or even slow himself, crashing through the clouds and losing sight of the golden city far faster than he ever thought possible. In a moment, a heartbeat, in a single second, Crowley was plunging down through a material he had never known before. The word came to mind, as convenient as always.

Dirt caked his face and ears and eyes. It doused the fire in dust and ash, cold and unforgiving in contrast to the burn and fall. 

Crowley came to a final stop, and he didn’t know what he was. He didn’t want to move. Pain still laced through what was left of his wings and down his back and across his shoulders. His cheeks were still wet and the salt still obvious on his lips. 

Crowley curled up where he was, not moving. He tried to think through what had happened. What had gone wrong? A single question, innocently asked. Him, fallen and burned. And Heaven, now far, far out of reach. Everything gone wrong in a matter of seconds. 

Crowley knew that angels could fall, obviously. He knew of the rumors and threats. He knew that several had already fallen too. There were angels higher than he was deciding what was right and wrong in the shadow of God, not asking for her permission before acting, condemning their fellows as if it were a hobby. Crowley must’ve fallen. He _stupidly_ realized that. Through the pain and the dirt and the fire, he realized. Fallen. 

A single question to cause this. 

Crowley closed his eyes and wept.

**Author's Note:**

> the summary and inspiration came from [this fic](https://interstellarvagabond.tumblr.com/post/185899143404/nonbinarydisaster-wrote-this-fic-and-graciously) by InsterstellarVagabond 
> 
> check out the rest of his writing too, it's all amazing. really top shit Good Omens stuff, if you can't tell I'm a huge fan
> 
> also, I know Good Omens is primarily Judeo-christian but they don't have a lot of names for their fallen angels, so I did borrow from Islam. Is that blasphemy?


End file.
